A new choice for the treatment of segmental tibial bone defects: intramedullary nail internal fixation combined adipose-derived stem cells technique.

The repair of various segmental tibial bone defects continues to be a challenging part of many reconstructive procedures. Many methods have been tried to repair the defects, followed by many complications and the results may be unsatisfied. Since 2001 Zuk et al. established human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) as a multipotent stem cell population with the ability to assume osteogenic phenotypes through chemically induced differentiation, hASCs represent a valuable tool for pharmacological and biological studies of osteoblast differentiation in vitro and bone development in vivo, and have been proved to be a useful source of stem cells in bone repair. Recently, hASCs have been found to repair both animals and human calvarial defects. In this paper, we hypothesize that hASCs cultured on custom scaffolds can be used to repair of tibial segmental bone defects with intramedullary nail internal fixed. Unlike current treatment modalities, it would promote the regeneration of tibial defects, provide structural support and allow for weight bearing and bony substitution over time.